China

2012

New
York, December 31, 2012--The New York Times
reported today that one of its correspondents in China, Chris Buckley, has had
to leave the mainland because Chinese authorities have not issued him a visa
for 2013.

China's mounting crackdown on online news dissemination took
an extra
step today, when the country's Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress, its de facto legislative body, announced new requirements on Internet
service providers and mobile phone companies to identify their users. The new
rules would potentially allow ISPs and the authorities to more closely tie real
identities to posts and commentary on micro-blogging sites like Weibo, as well
as connect text messaging and mobile phone conversations to individuals.

Worldwide tally reaches highest point since CPJ began
surveys in 1990. Governments use charges of terrorism, other anti-state offenses
to silence critical voices. Turkey is the world’s worst jailer. A CPJ special report

A media buyout in Taiwan which would put independent news outlets
critical of China into the hands of a pro-Beijing media tycoon is cause for
concern for the island's press. Jimmy Lai, the outspoken mogul behind Hong
Kong-based Next Media and the Apple Daily
tabloid, is selling his Taiwan holdings to a group of businessmen that includes Tsai Eng-meng, whose China Times Media group is supportive of China, according
to local and international news reports.

"I remain hopeful that
I will one day see the sun once more--not through the barred window of my
prison cell but as a free man." -Azimjon
Askarov

Today, on International Human Rights Day, CPJ and close to
20,000 supporters are calling on the governments of China and Kyrgyzstan to
release two journalists imprisoned for reporting on minorities' grievances and
human rights violations.

Not unusually, an already confusing situation in Tibet just
got worse. Twenty-seven Tibetans have self-immolated in protest against Chinese
this month alone, according to Human
Rights Watch. That's almost one a day. Against this chaotic backdrop, Chinese
authorities have issued an arrest order for a missing monk who helped film a
2008 documentary about life in Tibet, according to his film company, Filming
for Tibet.

CPJ supporters will know that we just honored self-taught Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen with an International Press Freedom Award, recognizing his courage documenting life under Chinese rule with full knowledge that he would face severe repercussions (he is serving a six-year jail term--you can join our petition for his release here). So we've been following with concern the latest reports that his assistant on that project, the monk Jigme Gyatso, has been missing, reportedly detained, since September.

The battle for a free press sometimes feels like a war
between indignation and intimidation. Journalists learn of abuses of power,
crime, or corruption, and--indignant--they speak out. In response, the
perpetrators of those abuses--be they government officials or criminals--try to
intimidate the journalists into silence with threats, lawsuits, jail, or even
murder. Last night, the Committee to Protect Journalists paid
tribute to a handful of journalists for whom indignation is a driving
force, no matter the scale of intimidation.

Like many China watchers, we at CPJ have been struggling to
interpret obscure floor
markings and tie
colors on display in Beijing as new Communist Party leaders were appointed
in a rare leadership hand-off today. The names of the top seven are no longer
in doubt. But the real question everyone's asking is: What does it mean (for
press freedom)?

When
a nation's most outspoken journalists are 11-year-olds, is it a good sign for the
future? On the one hand, they might grow up to ask probing questions. On the
other hand, they might end up following the path taken by their older peers and
stick to scripted exchanges.

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New York, November 5, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists has created a petition that calls on Chinese President Hu Jintao to immediately release unjustly imprisoned Tibetan journalist Dhondup Wangchen.

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New York, October 29, 2012--Officials
from China's Communist Party should stop censoring and obstructing foreign
journalists in the lead-up to the Party Congress scheduled for November 8, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Information security
is notoriously tight before the five-yearly congress, which is expected to
usher in high-level leadership change in 2012.

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New York, September 18, 2012--Chinese
authorities should release a well-known academic and Internet writer detained last
week in connection with his published articles, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Jiao Guobiao has been targeted in
the past for his articles criticizing the Chinese government.

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It was only a matter of time before Chinese Vice President Xi
Jinping's physical absence from the public view was accompanied by his
disappearance from cyberspace. The characters "Jinping" from his name were
censored today from searches of Sina's microblog service Weibo, according to
the Fei Chang Daoblog. Where else but China does a deficiency of information about
a nonappearance become a story worth deleting?

So is there a story or isn't there? International news reports say that Xi, President Hu Jintao's expected successor, has not been seen in public since Sept. 1, and missed a Sept. 5 meeting scheduled with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That was either a snub, a swimming injury, a stroke, or an assassination attempt, depending on who you talk to. Xi has missed other appointments too, though the full extent of his truancy remains unclear.

Denmark's Prime
Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is in China this week to meet with top leaders,
according to international news reports. CPJ's Advocacy and Communications
Associate Magnus Ag and Senior Asia Program Researcher Madeline Earp co-wrote
an op-ed calling on Thorning--as she is called in the Danish press--to raise the
issue of press freedom. An edited version ran in the Danish newspaper Politiken today.

Speaking truthfully to China on its repression of human rights can be a tricky endeavor in diplomatic affairs, but Helle Thorning-Schmidt has a prime opportunity to raise press freedom on her trip to China. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not give the issue public priority during their visits earlier this month, but as Thorning meets with top Communist Party leaders and addresses a World Economic Forum meeting in Tianjin, the opportunity must not be wasted.

New York, September 4, 2012--U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
should press Chinese officials in meetings this week to allow international
journalists based in China greater access to news events and fewer restrictions
of their coverage, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Chinese
dissident Wang Xiaoning was released today after serving a 10-year prison term
on charges of "incitement to subvert state power," a case built in good part on
client information supplied by Yahoo. Wang had used his Yahoo email account and
the discussion forum Yahoo Groups to spread ideas the government deemed
dangerous. His case closely parallels that of journalist Shi Tao, another Yahoo
user who fell afoul of the Chinese government. In 2005, Shi was convicted of "illegally
leaking state secrets abroad" and given a 10-year sentence. Yahoo had helped
authorities identify Shi through his account information.

My colleagues and I were saddened to learn of the death of Mika
Yamamoto, a Japan Press video and photo journalist who was killed while covering
clashes in Aleppo, Syria, on Monday. The moment was all the more poignant
because of the similarities with two other Japanese journalist fatalities: Kenji Nagai of APF News in
Burma in 2007 and Hiro
Muramoto of Reuters in Thailand in 2010. As with Yamamoto,
Nagai and Muramoto were photojournalists covering conflict between anti-government
elements and government troops in foreign countries.

It's not often we at CPJ find ourselves calling on other
countries to release
Chinese journalists from detention. But that's just what happened yesterday.
Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV contacted us to say that two of their journalists
were among a group of 14 arrested by Japanese authorities over a disputed
territory in the East China Sea. For once, we found ourselves in accordance
with Chinese authorities, who called for the "unconditional and immediate
release" of all 14, according to Reuters.

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New
York, August 16, 2012--Japanese authorities should release two Phoenix TV
journalists detained Wednesday while covering Chinese protesters landing on a
disputed territory between Japan and China, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today.

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We cover all kinds of censorship here at CPJ. Recently we documented
the cunning application of scissors to prevent readers from accessing
China-related articles in hard copy magazines. But it's been a while since
we've had chance to write about one favored implement of information control in
China: the umbrella.

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Chinese propaganda
officials must be thrilled that they're not responsible for the Olympics
coverage in the British papers. Back during the Beijing Games, they worked hard
to censor unrest and dissatisfaction in the domestic media. Reports of China's press freedom and human rights abuses were blocked, the kind of information
control idiomatically referred to as "harmonizing."

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This week, Morgan Marquis-Boire and Bill
Marczak of the University of
Toronto's Citizen Lab provided a disturbing
look into the likely use of a commercial surveillance program, FinFisher,
to remotely invade and control the computers of Bahraini activists. After the
software installs itself onto unsuspecting users' computer, it can record and
relay emails, screenshots, and Skype audio conversations. It was deployed
against Bahraini users after being concealed in seemingly innocent emails.

Chinese journalists are questioning government propaganda due
to conflicting reports of the death toll following Saturday's devastating
flooding in Beijing. Like the Wenzhou train crash and the Sichuan earthquake,
the tragedy has galvanized mainstream and online journalists--and the official
narrative is crumbling under their scrutiny.

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New York, July 24, 2012--A year after drawing public ire for
censoring coverage of a high-speed train crash, Chinese authorities should
allow journalists to freely cover the aftermath of Saturday's deadly flooding
in and around the capital, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
International news accounts said 37 people died in Beijing and up to 100 people
nationwide.

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Attempts to rein in
microblogs like Sina Weibo are a huge part of China's sophisticated information control strategy
these days. However, news reports last week serve as a reminder that propaganda
authorities also rely on methods that are more old school.

Shi
Junrong, Xi'an Evening News bureau chief in the city of Wei'an, ran into
trouble recently after he reported on the costly brand of luxury cigarettes
favored by local officials. He announced on his microblog that the paper
suspended him soon after, according to the U.S. government-funded Radio
Free Asia.

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Well, that didn't take long. Just days after The New York Times' soft launch of its
Chinese-language edition and accompanying microblog accounts, Berkeley-based China Digital Times website reports
that the @nytchinese Sina Weibo feed is no longer accessible in China,
along with two accounts hosted by Netease
and Sohu. We couldn't pull them up this
morning from New York, either.

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New York, June 29, 2012--Chinese censors should unblock the
website of the Bloomberg news agency, which became inaccessible today following
a story on the vice president's family and its financial assets, the Committee
to Protect Journalists said today.

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The Committee to Protect
Journalists is watching with concern the
progress of H.R.
2899, the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act of 2011, which is under discussion Wednesday
in front of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. The bill
seeks to reduce the number of visas available to journalists (and their
families) working in the United States for 13 Chinese state-controlled
publications. The aim is to pressure Beijing into allowing more Voice of
America reporters into China; VOA staffers tell us that they are allowed only two
China visas to cover a country of more than 1.3 billion people.

Chinese activists Lü Jiaping, his wife Yu Junyi, and an
associate, Jin Andi, were imprisoned in 2010 without their families being
informed. The full details of their 2011 trial and sentences were not made
public until 2012, according to the English-language Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

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China's state news agency Xinhua published the full
text of the state council's National Human Rights Action Plan 2012-15 on
Monday. There is no section dedicated to press freedom. But the most striking
omissions can be found in the text itself.

The last few weeks have offered the strongest indications
yet that nation-states are using customized software to exploit security flaws
on personal computers and consumer Internet services to spy on their users. The
countries suspected include the United States, Israel, and China. Journalists
should pay attention--not only because this is a growing story, but because if
anyone is a vulnerable target, it's reporters.

In China, people know enough not to take to the streets to
commemorate the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Beijing
is very quiet in the days before and after June 4. The Internet is a different
story.

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The
annual crackdown
on commemorations of the June 4 anniversary of the brutal suppression of
student-led demonstrations based in Tiananmen Square in 1989 Beijing is under way,
according to Agence
France-Presse. What's concerning is the number of writers and activists for
whom "crackdown" is the new normal.

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Sina's Twitter-like microblog service Weibo has released new
guidelines to restrict users who share banned content, according to
international news reports. It's the first time such guidelines target users
who adopt puns, homonyms, and other veiled
references to discuss censored news stories without using keywords on the
propaganda department's blacklist, the reports said.

Pity
those of us who monitor the ups and downs of China's popular microblog platform,
Sina Weibo. For every story its users spread
in defiance of local censorship, there follows a clampdown.
Whether it's the latest strike against rumors, or real name registration,
or newly banned keywords,
there's always another restriction in the works as the service struggles to
keep a lid on sensitive conversations without driving away its user base. "China tightens grip on social media," we
might report, as the Financial Times did
in April. And last October. (The U.K.-based newspaper also noted China's grip tightening on lawyers
in March.) It's not that these headlines are misleading. They simply show how
difficult it is to illustrate the grip that always tightens, but never quite
suffocates.

This
was not an auspicious reaction to the news that Al-Jazeera
English has closed its Beijing bureau after being refused journalist visas.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Hong Lei's responses at today's press
conference did not improve from there, according to a partial transcript
published by Voice of America. His
explanations for the ministry's refusal to renew credentials for the channel's
Beijing correspondent Melissa Chan were a mixture of denial and obfuscation. (Al-Jazeera's
Arabic-language bureau continues to operate with several accredited
journalists, according to The Associated
Press.)

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New York, May 7, 2012--China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs should
immediately grant accreditation to Al-Jazeera English reporters to work in
China, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The channel said China
has refused its long-time correspondent Melissa Chan and other colleagues journalist
visas, forcing it to close its Beijing bureau.

Will China's quickly expanding media presence in Africa
result in a fresh, alternative, and balanced perspective on the continent--much as Al-Jazeera altered the broadcast landscape with the launch of its English
service in 2006--or will it be essentially an exercise in propaganda?

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New York, May 3, 2012--Chinese security officials' ongoing obstruction
of foreign and domestic journalists covering dissident Chen Guangcheng is a worrying
sign for supporters trying to secure his safety, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today. Authorities in Chen's native Shandong province have
kept the blind, self-taught lawyer isolated
from the media since September 2010.

The battle over blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng's
freedom and well-being is a battle over information. Both Chinese and U.S.
officials are trying to spin the story their way. A few activists and media claim
to speak for Chen, and in China's anti-press environment they are putting
themselves at risk. Direct interviews with the man himself are hard to come by.

China didn't make the cut for our 10 most censored countries. While the Chinese
Communist Party's censorship
apparatus is notorious, journalists and Internet users work hard to overcome
the restrictions. Nations like Eritrea and North Korea lack that dynamism.

"High Tech, Low Life," a new documentary
about Chinese bloggers directed by Stephen Maing, debuted at the 2012 Tribeca
Film Festival in New York on April 19. It documents the lives of Zola (Zhou
Shuguang) and Tiger Temple (Zhang Shihe), as they blur the lines of citizen
journalism and activism though their reporting on evictions, pollution, and
official cover-ups in China. Zola was in town for the premiere, and he
and the director fielded questions from the audience after the film's showing.

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News of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng has been
censored for months. International news reports of his escape last week from incarceration
in his home in Linyi, Shandong--apparently to U.S. protection, although his
whereabouts remain unclear--has
only intensified that censorship. That is unlikely to stop discussion among
those familiar with Chen's case.

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New York, April 25, 2012--The U.S.-based, Chinese-language news
website Boxun has
come under two crippling denial-of-service attacks in the past week as the
outlet sought to report on the unfolding murder and corruption scandal
involving former senior Communist Party leader Bo Xilai. The attacks forced Boxun to change its hosting company twice,
the site's founder and editor Watson Meng told the Committee to Protect
Journalists.

Meng, who spoke to CPJ from his home in North Carolina, said he had not been able to trace the source of the denial-of-service attacks but believed they were in reprisal for Boxun's reporting on Bo Xilai and his ally Zhou Yongkang, the Communist Party's security chief, whose political fate has also been the subject of speculation this month. The first attack, on Friday, was so severe that it not only threatened Boxun but its entire hosting service, name.com. Denial-of-service attacks overload host servers with external communications requests, thus preventing websites from functioning.

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New York, April 13, 2012--Chinese authorities should halt
their censorship of Web content in the aftermath of senior politician Bo
Xilai's dismissal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Internet
officials in China have deleted at least210,000 online posts and shut down as many as 42 websites since mid-March
for allegedly spreading rumors, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported
on Thursday.

Chongqing
hotpot = King of the Southwest = King Who Pacifies the West = Minister of Yu = Tomato

What do these words have in common?
They are all coded references to Bo Xilai, the disgraced former Communist Party
leader in southwestern Chongqing, and they were all censored in China on
Tuesday, according to the Berkeley-based China
Digital Times website. Bo was
removed from his post in March, and state media reported Wednesday he had been suspended
from the governing Politburo and Party Central Committee. Propaganda officials censored speculation about
Bo's downfall and its implications for political stability, so Internet users
adopted terms like the ones above to avoid triggering keyword filters. Now
these, too, have been blacklisted, according to China Digital Times. Will
this senseless battle to hide information ever end?

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New York, April 2, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists
is concerned by Chinese authorities' recent clampdown on the Internet after
rumors circulated about politician Bo Xilai's
dismissal from the Communist Party leadership in
Chongqing. In recent days, authorities have shut down several microblog
sites and detained and targeted Internet users.

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New York, March 30, 2012--Authorities in Chongqing must
clarify the status of a journalist who reports say was secretly sentenced to
prison in 2010 for criticizing a government official in a personal blog, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ has not been able to
independently confirm the journalist's jail sentence or his whereabouts.

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The sacking
of Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai has sparked some entertaining gossip this
month, leaving journalists covering China with the difficult task of reporting on
unconfirmed reports. The Chinese government blames the international media, not
its own lack of transparency and comprehensive censorship apparatus, for the
burgeoning rumors.

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The political ouster of Bo Xilai, Chinese Communist Party
top dog in the major southwestern city of Chongqing, has been making headlines
around the world. Bo notoriously silenced critics like investigative journalist
Jiang Weiping, but the shoe
is now on the other foot, at least for a while.

Many China watchers are familiar with Bo because he was in
line for a position in the inner circle of Chinese politics, until state media
announced his replacement last week. CPJ has reported on Bo for different
reasons. Jiang, CPJ's 2001 International Press Freedom Award winner, spent five
years behind bars in China, after revealing several corruption scandals
involving Bo, a former mayor of Dalian city and then governor of the province,
Liaoning, where Jiang worked.

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Lhamo Tso has not spoken to her husband Dhondup
Wangchen since March 17, 2008. She,
their four children, and his elderly parents live in India, and hear of him only
when his sister visits the Xichuan Prison in Qinghai province, western China,
where he is serving six years. Through glass, he passes on the news: He's
contracted hepatitis, though the prison won't let the family pay for proper
medical treatment. He's working less -- promoted from 17-hour days in a brick
kiln to manufacturing acupuncture needles. His two lawyers have been told their
Beijing-based firm will be put out of business if they continue to work on his
case.

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New York, March 14, 2012--China has approved revisions to its
criminal code that grants police broad powers to hold journalists and others
who discuss sensitive national issues without chargein secret detention for up to six months, according to news
reports.

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China media analysts are looking to two significant events
to shape coverage this month: The anniversary of a failed uprising in Tibet,
and the annual meetings of China's top political bodies, the National People's
Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.
Journalists at work in both areas attracted coverage of their own today--but from
vastly different angles.

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New York, March 5, 2012--A Web editor in the southern
Chinese city of Foshan was jailed for 10 days after reposting an unconfirmed
report that two local officials had been caught with
prostitutes, according to Chinese and international news reports.

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Village elections taking place this weekend in southern
Guangdong province's Wukan illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of China's media
control. Censorship measures have not prevented strong domestic and
international coverage of the democratic process. But has official tolerance of
dissenting views increased since leaders cracked down on the attempted Jasmine
revolution last year? Or is Wukan not a real challenge to one-party rule, and
therefore OK to write about?

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Beijing-based blogger Woeser reported on her website Invisible Tibet today that she has been
confined to her residence by Beijing public security officers who are stationed
outside her home. Woeser, an outspoken critic of Chinese government policies in
Tibet, has written about a series of recent self-immolations among
monks and arrests
of writers in western China.

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Two months into 2012, all-too-familiar stories are emerging from
China's troubled minority regions, Tibet and Xinjiang. Following riots against
Chinese rule in 2008 and 2009, violence and its corollaries--increased
security and censorship--have become commonplace. Independent bloggers and
journalists who cover the unrest pay a high price: Over half the 27 journalists
documented by CPJ in Chinese
prisons on December 1, 2011, came
from ethnic minorities. Now we're bracing ourselves for the next wave of arrests.

Even as trade and new systems of communication turn us into global citizens, the information we need to ensure accountability often stops at national borders. New platforms like social media are valuable tools, but the battle against censorship is hardly over. By Joel Simon

Authorities blocked reporting of unrest occurring around the world, from Inner Mongolia to the Occupy movement. More than half of the 27 journalists imprisoned on December 1 were from Tibet and Xinjiang, reflecting crackdowns after earlier unrest in minority regions. After online calls for Arab Spring-style demonstrations, dubbed the Jasmine revolution, CPJ documented the worst harassment of foreign journalists since the 2008 Olympics, including beatings and threats. Police detained dissidents--including outspoken artist Ai Weiwei--and writers they feared could galvanize protests, often without due process, and kept them under surveillance after release. Draft revisions to the criminal code would allow alleged antistate activists to be held in secret locations from 2012. Officials obstructed reporting on public health and food safety issues, among other investigations. President Hu Jintao’s U.S. visit and two bilateral dialogues, one on human rights, made little headway on press freedom, but domestic activists successfully challenged censorship using digital tools, especially microblogs.

New York, February
16, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed by a series of
violent attacks on international journalists that appear aimed at suppressing
coverage of land-related protests in Panhe, in eastern China's Zhejiang
province.

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President Obama has promised to raise issues of human rights
when he and his administration meet with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in
the next day. After that, Xi, billed as China's next leader, is expected to
make some speeches, visit a few factories, stop at the Pentagon, sign some
contracts that will strengthen economic ties between the two countries, and then
head home.

Last
week, Twitter provoked a fierce debate online when it announced a new capability--and related
policy--to hide tweets on a country-specific basis. By building this feature
into its website's basic code, Twitter said it hoped to offer a more tailored
response to legal demands to remove tweets globally. The company will inform
users if any tweet they see has been obscured, and provide a record of all
demands to remove content with the U.S.-based site chillingeffects.org.

That's one of the main messages of Rebecca MacKinnon's new
book, Consent of the Networked,
which had its New York
launch at the offices of the New America Foundation last night. In a
conversation with CNN managing editor Mark Whitaker, MacKinnon, a CPJ board member, said
it's up to concerned citizens, governments, and corporations to make decisions
about how the Internet is used. She contrasted the Twitter-powered revolt in
Egypt last year with the "networked authoritarianism" of China, where
corporations are collaborators in a system designed to preserve Communist Party
rule.

For centuries, journalists have been willing to go to prison to protect their sources. Back in 1848, New
York Herald correspondent John Nugent spent a month in jail for refusing to tell a U.S. Senate committee
his source for a leak exposing the secret approval of a treaty with Mexico. In
a digital age, however, journalists need more than steadfast conviction to keep
themselves and their sources safe. Government intelligence agencies, terrorist
groups, and criminal syndicates are using electronic surveillance to learn what
journalists are doing and who their sources are. It seems many journalists are not keeping
pace.

At the launch of Google+, Google's attempt to create an integrated social
network similar to Facebook, I wrote about the
potential benefits and risks of the new service to journalists who use
social media in dangerous circumstances.

Despite early promises of relatively flexible terms of service at Google+,
the early days of implementation were full of arbitrary account suspensions - particularly
of pseudonymous users - and the appeals process was unclear. The result was a
lot of early
bad press for the service from the traditional "first adopter"
crowd, a framing it has subsequently struggled to escape.

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New
York, January 20, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the harsh sentence
given to Chinese writer and activist Li Tie, whose online writings calling for
political reform were cited as evidence of "subversion of state authority."

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New
York, January 13, 2012--The decision of prominent Chinese writer Yu Jie to seek
exile in the United States this week is an indication of the intensifying
hardships that face dissidents who criticize Communist Party rule, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today.